president obama telephoned senate majority leader harry reid monday while rob nabors huddled for a second day in a row aide to speaker john boehner. no discernible progress toward breaking the fiscal cliff stalemate. mr. obama left that drama behind and told supporters in suburban detroit the fiscal cliff is serious business. >> if congress doesn't act soon, meaning in the next few weeks, starting on january 1st, everybody's going to see their income taxes go up. >> reporter: boehner and house republicans want to preserve all the bush era tax rates due to expire at year's end, shielding everyone from a tax increase. mr. obama wants to raise them for households earning more than $250,000 a year. he has so far resisted gop demands for spending cuts to health care or education. >> i'm not going to have a situation where the wealthiest among us, including folks like me, get to keep all our tax breaks and then we're asking students to pay higher student loans. >> reporter: even so, democrats worry mr. obama might cave to republicans, their biggest fear, the president will do what he considered